June 25th 1950. What motivated Kim Il Sung to invade South Korea

“The reasons for the outbreak of the Korean War remain a mystery, we can only speculate about the motivations for the North Korean attack in 1950” (Stoessinger 2011, 63). As far as I have been able to find no public reason was given by Kim Il Sung as to his motivations for sending North Korean troops flooding over the 38th parallel on that fateful June morning. Stoessinger offers four potential reasons behind the North Korean invasion. The two reasons he determined the most probable involved Stalin pulling the strings and ordering the invasion. The first reason is the one that was held by Harry Truman in that he was seeing how much resistance he would get if he tried to expand his Communist agenda into South Korea. “Truman, for example, justified his decision to enter the Korean War in 1950 as a way to deter the Soviet Union, which he saw as the architect of the conflict, from future acts of aggression that could touch off a World War III” (Dallek 2010). The second was that Stalin wanted to cause trouble for China. The third and less likely possibility in Stoessinger’s view was that China was the one who pushed Kim Il Sung into this fight. Stoessinger saw that the least likely option was the Kim Il Sung acted on his own. This essay will attempt to show that this last possibility is actually one that should be given more credit by analyzing the geopolitical landscape of the Korean Peninsula in the few years leading up to the war. It will also show which of the modern theories on the causes of war apply to this situation.

In order to understand the geopolitics of the area one must know the history of the two leaders of the divided Korean Peninsula at the time of the war. James Stokesbury provides a very good brief history of each man in his Short History of the Korean War (1988). South Korean president Syngman Rhee and North Korean Chief of State, Kim Il Sung, both had revolutionary histories within Korea. Both were involved in the 1919 failed uprising against the Japanese occupation of Korea. Each man went into exile following the event, where their paths diverged very dramatically. Rhee went back to the US where he had earned a PhD during his first round of exile at the turn of the century. Sung went north into Manchuria and possibly into the Soviet Union. “His official biography says he organized the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Army in Manchuria, but there have been suggestions that he went instead to the Soviet Union and fought in the Red Army and even that he was in Stalingrad in 1942” (Stokesbury 1988). What is known for certain is that when he returned to North Korea following the war he was a devoted communist who held Stalin in great regard. Quite differently, Rhee did not return from the United States a devotee of democracy and capitalism, however he was devoutly anti-Communist. He ended up ruling the South quite autocratically despite the support from the US.

Once the line of demarcation was settled between the US and Russia during the negotiations for Russia to enter the war against Japan all key players appeared to be at peace with the solution. The US had always intended that Korea would eventually be reunited but it wasn’t in a hurry as it had enough to worry about getting Japan and Western Europe back in shape following the war. Eventually the UN took on the problem of reunification but it too could not broker an agreement with the Russians who wanted to ensure a Communist government on its border. In the end both the US and Russians pulled out of the two Koreas and both governments left behind saw the other as illegitimate. Both leaders expounded frequently denouncing the other and threatening to remove each other from power.

The Russians set about in getting North Korea established with its own military offering up tanks, aircraft, heavy artillery to name just some. As well it helped the North Koreans to build an effective well disciplined army. They wanted to ensure that if the south did invade that Sung was prepared to defend himself. Whether they actually were preparing him to assault the south is possible, but not a certainty. Meanwhile Rhee’s rhetoric made the US very nervous. As such they wanted to ensure that he would not invade the north as that was a problem they did not need, nor were prepared for at the time. “Syngman Rhee had never made any secret of his ambition to use the army offensively to unify the country, and the Americans, in their desire not to let him do so had structured an army that was not much good for heavy combat” (Stokesbury 1988). Unfortunately this left the south unable to defend itself either. Clearly the US did not see Sung as any more credible as Rhee in his threats, and that Russia would likely keep him in check.

At the beginning of 1950 Korea was divided with two leaders who despised each other, had complete conviction that their government was the only legitimate one and revolutionary backgrounds where they each participated in leadership roles. Where they differed is that Sung had a well equipped and well trained military at his disposal where Rhee did not. The only thing between Sung and the ability to invade was the Americans. By this time though, the Americans had been making policy decisions that did not include protecting either Formosa (Taiwan) or Korea from invasion. “…on January 12, Secretary of State Dean Acheson repeated the President’s views and again excluded South Korea from the U.S. defense perimeter” (Stokesbury 1988). With this additional information it is entirely conceivable that Kim Il Sung would have made a unilateral decision to invade the south. He knew Stalin well and his views on expanding communism which would give him comfort that Stalin would have no problem with such an invasion on the off chance he did not tell him what he was planning. Even if it was Stalin’s plan that Sung would invade the south he would have had a more than willing accomplice where no “ordering the attack” would have been required. Unfortunately for Sung, or Stalin for that matter, is that despite the Acheson speech the US would intervene once it was clear that the south was being routed.

In this particular case two theory classes stand out as applying to the outbreak of the Korean conflict in so far as Sung’s decision to launch the invasion. First is the psychological class. “With regard to the problem of the outbreak of war, the case studies indicate the crucial importance of the personalities of leaders” (Stoessinger 2011, 401). The strong feelings and beliefs of the leaders on both sides of the 38th parallel played a major role in the escalation of rhetoric and tensions in the years leading up to the war, as did their revolutionary history. Rhee knew he was in no position to invade but continued to threaten the north thus employing on of the pillars of psychological war theories of distraction. “Rhee was vigorously calling for war against the north, perhaps to take people’s minds off the real failure of his government to improve their lives substantially” (Stokesbury 1988). That said though, each leader felt passionately that the other was the embodiment of the evil keeping Korea from being united under one government and wanted more than anything to be the hero that reunited the peninsula which is decidedly a psychological feature.

The second class would be the information theories. As passionate as Rhee was about invading the north he knew he was not in a position to stand up to the stronger north at that time. Sung understood he had a superior army that gave him a distinct advantage. His intelligence was technically correct in that the US did not include Korea in its security strategy of the time other than continuing to advise them on their military buildup. He incorrectly predicted that the US would not change its mind when faced with the reality of the situation and the long term consequences of not coming to Korea’s defense thus extending the war for the first time while pushing the North Korean’s back across the 38th parallel.

Throughout the 3 ½ years the conflict went on there were many decisions that extended the war longer than the original plans of any of the leaders. Each of these could be analyzed as a separate “cause of the next phase” of the war. However the initial spark that started the war was the invasion on June 25th, 1950. It was driven by the personalities of the two leaders of the Korean countries and their interaction with each other. Clearly how the US and Russia treated their respective wards played a big role as well, but had the two leaders been less contentious it is likely that the balance of power on the peninsula would have shaped up differently.

WORKS CITED

Dallek, Robert. "The Tyranny of Metaphor." Foreign Policy. November 2010. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/11/the_tyranny_of_metaphor?page=full (accessed January 4, 2011).

Stoessinger, John G. Why Nations Go To War. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011.

Stokesbury, James L. A Short History of the Korean War. New York, NY: Harper Collins e-books, 1988.